


In Remission

by Quinara



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, Community: seasonal_spuffy, F/M, Foucault, Future, Gen, a bit angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the five years Spike's been missing, the world around Buffy has irrevocably changed. The general population has woken up to vampires' existence and the kill count has dropped way down. She's sharing a house with a soulless vampire, still going by the name of Faith. But what does Spike have to do with it? And what does it mean for their future?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Buffy

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Fall 2013 round of Seasonal Spuffy. It is what it is, but it should be known that my obsession with Foucault is somewhat influential on the problems and challenges posed herein!

_**November 2014, Oakland CA**_

Only the tabloids called it vampirism. To the politicians and the healthcare providers it was known as Photosensitive Haematomania, or PHM. The internet was divided on which was the appropriate term to use, since many vampires seemed happy to self-identify that way and no one could decide whether ‘haemo’ was a slur or not, even as the most popular noun to describe a PHM sufferer. No one was either quite sure whether it meant anything to include the A.

PHM was a recognised condition, with psychological treatment programmes and awareness campaigns, but no actual cure. Buffy could never remember when and by whom it had been officially ‘diagnosed’, but it was all shifty anyway. Bullshit and rumour. Called on, no one was quite sure how it was spread, so everyone assumed sex or drug use and a few more wholesome things in-between. It came with a system of legal regulation, which mostly seemed to boil down to a guarantee of the death sentence whenever it could be applied. Which happened often; haemos couldn’t serve jury duty.

But it wasn’t just haemos dying. And so they were the ones people blamed for the turn back of the law to harsher punishments. More than that, haemos were the reason why you couldn’t eat a decent steak anymore without getting funny looks. Haemos were to blame for the cult of ageless youth plaguing the entertainment and beauty industries.

The sad fact was, as far as Buffy and the Watchers’ Council could measure, they were all living in a better world. Fatalities were down – way down – and vampires for the most part kept to themselves and their sympathisers, whom they collectively treated relatively well. In the last year Dawn had even made the move to reclassify vampires in the annals from Class I demons (evil by nature) to Class II (evil by choice; aggressive). The vote hadn’t passed, but it still marked a sea change.

It was a world Buffy could never have seen coming, any more than she’d have figured some people would actually go for Google Glass. The thing was, as much as it was better, Buffy wasn’t sure it was all that nice.

“Fifty _bucks_?” Faith spat from Buffy’s side. “Are you fucking kidding me? For a gallon of pig you probably scraped off the slaughterhouse floor?”

Somewhere along the way, it had stopped being weird that Faith was a vampire. It had stopped being weird that they lived together, originally so Buffy could keep an eye on her one-time co-Slayer, now-time friend; these days so they could save on cash. Because some stuff was expensive.

“I’ve been around a long time,” the man behind the counter spat right back, taking Buffy in his glare as well. This was the bay area, but apparently even that couldn’t buy you tolerance in this life. “I know what you haemos really are... The price is forty-nine eighty.”

Butchers really did have it kind of bad. People had gone a little squeamish about meat, at least in California, so times were tough. Still, as Faith’s anger was apparently close enough to the surface to make Buffy’s own tingly hackles rise, she didn’t have that much sympathy. “We’ll take it,” she said shortly, pulling up her purse. “But you can keep the attitude.”

Habit meant that she paid for the blood in cash. Everybody did, though Buffy wasn’t quite sure why. Some of the more paranoid vamps Buffy knew down Club Sanguine, the local vamp bar – they thought the government was trying to track vamp communities, so when the time came they could wipe them out. Buffy wasn’t sure what to think. Technically she had a given calling to do just that, but mostly she thought Bart made a mean pineappletini and the soulless gang could be kind of hilarious.

She was a lot more chill these days. Likely that was because most of the vamps she met had never killed anyone and she didn’t have too many other friends. The Council wasn’t really her home anymore and the teachers at the school where she worked didn’t think she did a real job, listening to students angst about their problems. So she was officially a Mina, as people called the vamp groupies. Even if it was five years too late.

“Have a nice night,” the butcher told them sarcastically once he’d finished bagging up four particularly sad-looking quarts.

Faith took them from him, holding the bag to her denim jacket. “You should be glad I don’t kill people,” she said before they left the store. The butcher muttered something behind them, but Buffy couldn’t be bothered to listen.

“I think it’s getting worse,” Buffy commented as they headed back to the car. She didn’t understand why it should be. It sort of made sense, of course, that since vampires weren’t really like any other minority they couldn’t expect to be accepted so easily. The majority of them were, for real, not very nice people. And there was shady stuff that happened – people knew about the mirrors and the invites and the lack of heartbeats, but they didn’t know what to do with it, how it made sense. PHM was meant to be a psychological epidemic as much as anything, so the invites and aversion to crosses and stuff were extreme psychosomatic responses which played into learned tropes about vampires, but no one knew how that could work or how it could be catching. A few religious types came out and said they were actually demons, which it seemed like people didn’t quite believe, but it set them on edge all the same.

It was hard to work out whether this mass delusion was healthier than the one that said vampires didn’t exist at all, but it seemed like a step in the right direction – even if demons themselves still snuck under the radar. What Buffy couldn’t work out was whether vampires really were that much nastier than the general population, not now that they didn’t kill or steal, on the whole. The strength thing didn’t make much difference when they kept to themselves – and the new state of affairs didn’t show the human population in the best light, most of the time.

“It’s human nature,” Faith said, sounding unperturbed as she broke into Buffy’s thoughts. “At the heart of every Joe Normal there’s something that gets off on the hate.” It had been three years now she’d been turned, so Buffy supposed she was used to the looks. They got some coming out of the butcher’s, from a woman holding a children close in a way, ten years ago, Buffy would have told her was pretty darn sensible. It was just kind of a shame that ten years ago she probably wouldn’t have thought to. “It got a little hairy there for a while,” Faith added as they back towards their car, heavy traffic filling out the silences. “You know, with gay marriage and Obama and whatever – but now they’ve got us all to hate on, so everything’s OK. And we don’t give a shit – ‘cause we know they’re just us.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, because she knew that last sentence wasn’t entirely true. Either part of it. Vamps could be sensitive and a lot of them were, Faith included, in a way that seemed to go right along with the callous bitch persona. Also, “People aren’t vamps.” This was the one truism, maybe the only one, that had stuck with her all this time. “People _make_ vamps, but something definitely happens when the demon goes in. People get scared and lash out at the unfamiliar; vamps get angry and figure it out through sadism. Unless…”

Turning her head, Faith stared at her, kind of shrewd, kind of offended, kind of challenging. The age difference between them was getting noticeable now – Buffy in her mid-thirties; Faith not long past. It made sense, though, because Faith had always been younger. Buffy just wondered if it would have got weird yet with…

“Don’t get back thinking on them, B,” Faith interrupted her thoughts, apparently more than able to realise which group of exceptions she held Faith with. “You know it’s not worth it.”

They were almost at the car now, but for a moment Buffy didn’t want to go home. It was always way too empty. “It’s only been five years,” she said, repeating what she’d thought a million times before. “They could still be out there. They could come back.” The world had changed in the last five years and Buffy couldn’t believe that Spike and Angel hadn’t been around to see it. She couldn’t believe Spike would vanish from her life right at the moment when the world would have accepted him in it. Most of the time she could get by without thinking about it, but sometimes it just chafed. It was _too_ unfair.

At her side Faith rolled her eyes, completely out of empathy. It was probably better that way. “You’ve gotta accept they’re gone. If they’re out there then they don’t wanna be in touch. It’s over. You blew it. Not sure what you did to piss Angel off as well, but, hey, maybe they ran away together…”

At that moment, however, Buffy caught sight of something that had to be an hallucination. Maybe the reason they’d come to mind in the first place. “Faith,” she said, trying to pull herself out of whatever fantasy she’d let herself fall into. “Faith,” she said again, since it seemed the other woman was lost in a daydream of her own. “Faith! _Who_ is that leaning against your car?”

Finally Faith looked where Buffy was looking. There was a figure standing on the sidewalk, arms stretched out over the top of the roof and its head hung between them, looking into the backseat window. Buffy couldn’t make out its head, and it was wearing a khaki jacket that looked three sizes too big, but the way he stood – if it was a he – he called up a dozen hundred memories, every single one that Buffy had held onto way too long.

“No idea,” Faith commented uselessly, apparently not seeing what Buffy was seeing. That was OK, though; they’d never really spent that much time in each other’s company, had they? “But I’ve gotta say,” Faith continued. “If he scratches that paint he’s a dead man.”

“I think he already is,” was all Buffy could say, before her feet were taking her rushing over to the figure’s side. She touched his arm, and when he looked round it could have been any moment from any time that they’d known each other. His face was gaunt, way thinner than it should have been, and his hair was grown right out to a sandy blond-brown he’d still managed to get slicked back somehow – but he looked at her with the same affectionate mockery, the same knowingness and the same little stab of bitterness that he’d had even before he’d loved her. “Spike…” she said, and she knew she sounded like some stupid romance heroine.

“You kept my blanket,” he said, sounding bewildered. It took her a moment to realise what he was talking about, but then she remembered the old fleece Faith kept in the back of the car, in case of the need to dash through the sun. It was Buffy’s; neon green and navy blue Fair Isle fleece. She’d bought it years ago, definitely not for Spike even if he was the only one who’d ever used it. Under duress for it being so ugly. The same way Faith did, though that was really because Faith was too cheap and too proud to buy herself another one. They didn’t play the same games – like Spike was playing now, asking her, “Why on earth would you…?”

And then, quite suddenly, he was collapsing into coughs, sinking into her arms. “God, Spike; what happened to you?” Buffy asked, clutching his carcass close to her, brain shorting with shock. She’d never felt him this bony, and he’d got pretty light the year she’d come back from the dead. Then at least he’d had muscle tone. She reached around him, trying to open the backdoor, her scrabbling hand useless with nerves and the heady dopamine shot of elation. This couldn’t be true; it couldn’t be happening. She asked again, “Where have you been?”

“Around,” Spike coughed as the door came open Faith managed to shove them both inside, passing Buffy the blood. That was – that was actually a really good idea. Spike let out a loopy sort of snigger before adding, “Got caught up for a while.”

“Caught up…?” Buffy asked, rummaging through paper. She wasn’t sure how to even start thinking about what he was saying. “You weren’t…”

Spike only snarled in response, cutting her off as he grabbed at the plastic quart bag and dragged it roughly to his mouth, fangs already drawn. His hands were clasped around Buffy’s and she shuddered as she felt the pressure of the bag opening, the force as he held it closer and swallowed.

Shivering, she tried to centre herself. There would be time for questions later. There would be time. He needed to feed, and they could talk. She could find out…

“Well I guess you win, B,” Faith said as she came in the driver’s door. The door slam made Buffy jump. “Looks like he must have escaped from somewhere.”

Maybe a pint down, Spike sniggered again, all bloody fangs and yellow eyes in a way that left Buffy speechless. “Oh, it’s much worse than that,” he filled the silence, tongue swiping around his canines before he took the bag from Buffy’s hand and tilted it up to get the rest. “They let us go.”

As Faith pulled out from the curb, Buffy felt a single, lonely shiver run up her spine. She wasn’t sure way, but she knew something was very wrong – and she couldn’t tell whether it was with Spike or with the situation. It made her nervous.

But then Spike’s eyes were sliding to hers and he was taking hold of her hand again; her mind shut down. All she could think about was the last time she’d seen him, the last time they’d spoken.

* * *

_**December 2009, Cleveland OH**_

“So, do you and Angel have any plans for New Year’s?”

Unintentionally naked again, it was the only thing Buffy could think of to say. Her apartment was a mess, partly because it was too small for her stuff and partly because she lived like pig, but mostly because she’d pulled Spike out of the taxi and proceeded to hump him in pretty much any space that was available or else rudely occupied by furniture.

Finally, however, they were in bed, because in one moment of mutual dopiness Spike had led her there by the hand and she’d snuggled with him under the covers. There had been more kissing, but that had eventually resolved into breathing rather than the other thing, her curled up against his chest as the winter cold seeped into her back.

“Doubt it,” Spike answered her question, nuzzling the top of her head. “Just work bollocks. Nothing special.”

Buffy bit her lip, holding back the urge to ask him to stay with her. It was a weakness she had when they were like this, completely related to the weakness she had for kissing him and taking off his clothes, though she always managed to be strong enough for the very last hurdle.

Because she knew, she always knew that as much as she wanted it, it couldn’t work. Teaching and slaying with the Council meant that she had barely any time for a boyfriend as it was, and she’d grown used to living on her own. The bank found her finances already suspicious enough, just like her landlord, so it was going to raise a lot of questions if she suddenly introduced an undocumented foreign national into the proceedings. They’d get bored of each other in two weeks. And well-adjusted modern women simply did not take up with men who could not be introduced at any daytime events. They got a cat or something instead. Or else only caught up with their vampire once every three or four months, never officialised anything and generally pretended for the rest of the time that nothing was going to happen.

How actually sad was it she’d been living in the same holding pattern for almost five years now? That was what she wanted to know.

In an attempt to distract herself, Buffy asked the other question on her mind. “Did you see there was another news report – about the vamp disease?” She couldn’t quite believe it, that people were actually starting to think about vampires as real. It was the single chink in her argument against Spike’s presence in her life, not that she’d ever told him that. Every time it got mentioned, her resolve weakened. “What d’you think it’s gonna mean?” She doodled her finger over Spike’s chest, trying to tell him without words all the stuff she was thinking about. “Would you wanna be reclassified? Do the psych tests? I can’t think any of it’s gonna come out good, but…”

“Buffy,” Spike said seriously, like he was changing the topic. “How long are we going to keep doing this?”

She pulled back in his arms, apprehensive. Somehow he seemed too willing to let her go, limned by the grainy halogen she’d dimmered for the romance. And he hadn’t picked up her hint. “What d’you mean?” she asked, even though she could more than figure it out.

“I mean _this_ ,” Spike replied, searching her eyes for something Buffy really hoped he could see. “I mean not hearing anything from you for months at a time then getting called up on false pretences for what always ends up as nothing more than a protracted fucking booty call.”

She winced. “Please don’t call it that.” It sounded really weird when he said it, the ‘boo’ all round and un-casual. And he put too much emphasis on the T. Plus it wasn’t, even. “Besides, it’s the same when you invite me to LA.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t plan for it to…” Spike trailed off, looking away. Presumably he realised that she could have said exactly the same thing. “Look, is there something I should be doing on my end?” he came back with, a little hopeless, a little guarded. Like he already knew what was coming. “Where do you want this to go?”

“Don’t make me say it,” she asked him softly, really hating where the conversation was going. Their encounters always ended with something like this and she hated it. Especially because she hadn’t worked it out; it was too early to really think it through and he was always pushing her. And when he wasn’t pushing her he was telling her it was him, that there was stuff to figure out and get done. He always forgot it later, but he ran hot and cold just as fast as she did and it made her nervous.

Like now – he seemed to think he’d found courage, but that couldn’t make her forget all the time he’d spent hiding away from her. “I think you should say it,” he hold her, raising his chin. But she knew he’d only hear one answer. “I think you should tell me. I think we should both finally suss out what we mean and do something about it, not just muddle on forever. Because we could have something, yeah? Something real.”

The certainty in his voice made her eyes tear up. It didn’t help that she was full of sex. “Spike, I love you. You know I do.” She said it to try and convince herself, because, actually, looking at his face, she could never be sure he did. Which was why she had to be the bitch and continue, “I love you, but we _can’t_ … I don’t know how it could ever work between us. For now we might be OK but what about in ten, fifteen years’ time? It hurts enough as it is… I can’t get into something heavier that’s doomed to fall apart.”

Oh hell, Buffy realised, as a feeling of déjà vu passed over her, as Spike got his mulish, hurt expression on his face. She’d said the same thing to Riley, hadn’t she? She remembered precisely using the word ‘doomed’, could hear it in her head.

The thing was, that relationship had been doomed – but not for the reasons she’d thought it had been. But the fact that she was thinking it again, saying it again… But it seemed so clear to her that that was how things were. It couldn’t be just how she saw stuff. It couldn’t be like, oh, what was his name psych-vamp Spike had sired when he was crazy… She wasn’t that un-objective, surely?

Spike was looking at her like she’d broken his heart. “I used to know how to take risks,” he choked out, smoothing circles over her forearms with his thumbs. “I did. But then I got this soul and I… I wish I could tell you we’re a sure bet, but I can’t – but I don’t know why that means…” Suddenly then he seemed to force his mouth closed, shaking his head like he didn’t trust what was going to come out of him.

Buffy wished she could work out what to say. She’d run out of romantic courage a hell of a long time ago. “We could at least keep in touch more, right?” she asked, taking a hand to the nape of his neck and wondering how the heck she was ever going to give this up. If she realistically ever would. “Be better friends?” Spike inhaled once with his eyes closed, like he was determined to recover himself. She promised him, “We don’t have to just Romeo and Juliet it up the whole time…”

“All right,” Spike then said after a moment’s silence. He looked drained and she could feel his pain like it was her own. “But can we go to sleep now? Not sure I’m up for more of this tonight.”

For a moment she thought about resisting, but then she decided that she had to give him this. “Sure,” she agreed, the tears not gone from her eyes as she rolled over to switch out the light. His arms didn’t seem quite so yielding when she curled back in.

The next morning he was gone.

* * *

_**November 2014, Oakland CA**_

The combination of the moving car and a bellyful of blood seemed to be enough to send Spike to sleep quicker than a baby. By the time they made it back home he was slumped on Buffy’s shoulder with his hands resting across her thighs, out for the count. If he’d been awake it wouldn’t have been too unwelcome a come-on; as it was, Buffy could only be grateful that he wasn’t repulsed by her and her memory.

Easing his body out of the car, she and Faith steadily heaved Spike up into the house and ultimately to Buffy’s bed, because it seemed like the most sensible place to put him. He half woke up on the way, dragging his feet groggily up the stairs, but with a stroke of his hair and the admonition to get some rest he was out like a light again the moment his head touched the pillow. His hand remained in a feeble hold around Buffy’s fingers; she sat by his side, dipping the mattress.

“What do you think happened to him?” she asked Faith. The shock hadn’t quite worked its way through her system, but her voice was steadier now. She figured it wouldn’t wake Spike up, and it would be good to have some answers before he woke up. “He can’t have been starving five years; he’d be gone by now… But _this_ –” Yet again she glanced over the lines of his body, where it lay under the heather and moss pinstriped duvet. There was absolutely nothing to him. “– this takes a long time.”

“I dunno, B.” Faith was lurking in the doorway, just like she always did if she had to get Buffy from here. Apparently all the crosses under the bed and in Buffy’s jewellery box gave her the heebie-jeebies. Buffy had had no idea vamps could tell if it wasn’t a church. “He was somewhere and they let him, go right? What about that time he got taken before?”

“You mean with the Initiative?” Buffy asked, frowning. Faith shrugged, one arm crossed over in front of her. “You don’t think they’re actually capturing vamps, do you?” There were conspiracy theories – everyone in vampire circles knew the conspiracy theories – but barely anybody believed them. It just wouldn’t make sense to piss off the vampire population back into being as murderous as they’d been before. “It doesn’t make sense.” She looked back to Spike, fidgeting and shuddering slightly into the covers. “Not to mention – why would they let him go?”

“Not a clue,” Faith replied, sounding much more together than Buffy was. “D’you want me to ask around at the Council? I was meant to be going in anyway.” Despite her tone, though, Buffy sometimes got the impression that she cared.

Which was why Buffy had got into the habit of trusting her, pretty much like old times. Or maybe more than that, which was weird. “That’d be great, if you could.” And she even remembered to add, “Thanks,” shooting a smile back towards the door.

“Don’t sweat it,” Faith replied, a little enigmatically. “Least I could do for the guy who made you give me a chance… But I’ll see you when I get back.”

She was gone, then, before Buffy had a chance to think of a reply. The room fell quiet and Buffy glanced around, not soothed by the wheezing edge to Spike’s breathing. Her place these days was exactly how she’d always wished he could have seen it – décor that actually existed, sturdy furniture she thankfully didn’t often need to use as a weapon. She had the rug on the floor that she’d picked up travelling, an occasional chair with a couple of cushions she’d liked at a craft sale. For the first time since Sunnydale, she felt like she had a home, and she just hoped this time she could convince him – and herself – that there was a place for him in it.

“Oh god,” Buffy whispered to herself, eyes squeezed shut. Spike’s fingers twitched around hers. What was she going to do? She didn’t know what she was going to do at all.

.


	2. Faith

_**November 2014, San Francisco CA** _

“Hey, hey; it’s me and I’m in early…”

The welcome wasn’t exactly overwhelming when Faith walked into the office. First Response had replaced the old Wetworks division and got done most of the slaying-like slaying these days, so it didn’t attract sunniest people in the world. And hell, Faith was allergic to sun these days, so that mostly suited her just fine. But she still thought they could drum up something resembling enthusiasm. “Yo, Sash,” she said more pointedly, loud enough so Sasza could hear her through his headphones. “Are we paying you for that now?”

Flicking a button on his keyboard, Sasza looked around. In the last few years he’d started getting his hair shaved close, to mask his receding hairline, but he was the same boy nerd as ever; paused on the screen behind him was some shoot-‘em-up with an AK-47’s sightline and a bunch of dead bodies littering some sandy dunes. It looked fun, but Faith didn’t think she was the only one who should have to make herself do work.

“Why don’t you bite me, Faith?” Sasza snarked with a quick spin around on his chair. It might have been a joke, but they weren’t always, even a couple of years down the line. With her wacky lack of soul, Faith didn’t always find it so easy to tell. “You get me some work and I’ll do it.”

Thankfully the lack of soul came with some pretty epic super-strength, so she was able to grab the back of Sasza’s chair and pull him light as a feather towards the cluster of other desks where the rest of the night team were joking around. “It’s your lucky day,” Faith told his startled expression. “’Cause I’m calling a meeting.”

Troy, the other guy on the team, looked like he wanted to complain. And then he did. “Shouldn’t Caridad be here if we’re gonna do group stuff?”

Little Amy, who was always going to be Little Amy, looked almost apologetic, paperclip chain still twined between her fingers. “She’s not back until tomorrow…”

“I know C’s fucking schedule, OK?” Faith told them, glaring round the group. Two years ago these had been her people, but they’d cut her out quicker than anything. They were Caridad’s crew now, Number Two become Number One, while Faith wasn’t number anything. On a day to day basis it didn’t hurt so much as piss her off, but they were all going to have to suck it up. “But we’ve got something happening tonight and I wanna know if any of you have heard stories about vamps running scared from something, or else turning up starved in a bar somewhere.”

They all looked around at one another, like they were school kids and Faith was their teacher. She jumped back to sit on her own desk, trying to feel less edgy about the whole situation. These were her co-workers; if she had shit to say, then they were mean to listen. It wasn’t her fault she forgot what it was like every time she came in from hanging around Buffy. They didn’t have to treat her differently.

“I guess I heard something the other night,” Taya spoke up, sounding annoyed that she had to talk. But then Taya always sounded annoyed. It didn’t matter. “I was out at this new bar in SOMA, right, and while I was waiting fifteen goddamn years to get served this haemo starts getting chatty about credit cards again.” Faith bristled on the ‘haemo’, because Taya was a Slayer and in her day they’d had some class – but she didn’t interrupt. “You know, the usual shit about the NSA or whatever?” Taya continued. “But, I mean, I called him on it and he seemed to think he’d seen proof or heard it from somewhere.”

“Did you ask him what it was?” Little Amy asked, still playing with her paperclips.

But Taya shrugged. “I got served. He wasn’t hot. I moved on.”

Faith rolled her eyes. “First class investigating there, Taya. It’s almost like it’s your job to keep track of this stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” Taya shot straight back, acid in her glare. “The job description’s kind of in flux these days, don’t you think?”

The silence that followed was icy and Faith caught herself on edge. This wasn’t quite how she’d expected this meeting to go, and, actually, had that line from Taya been a threat?

“Vamps have been saying this stuff for years, Faith,” Shivani cut in before Faith could decide, speaking up from her and M’s part of the desk. She sounded like she was tired of all the bickering. “D’you have some reason to think it’s changed?”

“Right,” Faith agreed, taking the olive branch as it was offered. She could never manage to resist these arguments, for some reason. She had to keep acting like this was a meeting, not a fight. “Yeah,” she confirmed, uncrossing her arms. “We had a thing, me and Buffy, when we were out downtown tonight. D’you remember that Spike guy? Big name back in Sunnydale.”

“The vampire with a soul?” Little Amy asked, scrunching up her nose like it was a memory she’d long forgotten. “Didn’t he go missing?”

“I thought he was the one who made Buffy leave the Council,” Troy added – because of course he’d transferred out of Cleveland too. Faith couldn’t help but smirk at the expression on his face. He’d always had the hots for B – the whole Spike thing had to chafe. It was funny, not least the part about some vampire making Buffy to anything. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“Well, he’s back,” Faith said, glad to finally have their attention. It was almost like she was in charge again, ready to take on the world with her crew right behind her, set to get some bad guys’ heads a-rolling. The whir of computer fans couldn’t even keep her down. “Starved like no vamp I’ve ever seen and on the run from somewhere. Said they let him go, which sounds to me like there must be someone out there bagging vamps. Possibly the big guys.”

It didn’t quite have the effect Faith intended. As far as she was concerned, this was pretty big fucking news. Even on top of every other part of the story, the last thing Faith wanted was to end up as a lab rat.

But for some reason Faith’s went down like a lead balloon. She watched it drop with one long slow thud into the biggest anti-climax ever seen by the naked eye.

“So what?” Taya asked with a shrug – speaking, it looked like, for all them. “If they let him go then there’s no problem, is there? Besides.” She sat back, raising her hands like she was out of the conversation. “My guy in the bar said his source was a chick. I figured she whored his credit card right out of him and bailed so he could turn his whining on the rest of us.”

There was silence. Faith stared, remembering the days when they were out every night and back in every morning. HQ was more their home these days, still too small but way more lived in. They had a coffee maker and a microwave; a box of decorations waiting for December so they could deck out the desks for the holidays. It was like they were working the dead-end cubicle jobs none of them were meant for, and Faith figured that could almost explain why everyone was so damn touchy all the time.

They were getting fat, Faith realised. Just a little. And lazy too. They could have taken her down, back when she’d first been turned, but she ran through a little scenario in her head right then and she figured she’d have them all dead in five minutes, tops. Taya would go first, then the guys and M while she was loading up. Amy and Shivani last, because they’d be the ones feeling the shock. Two minutes was all it would take.

They were an embarrassment. And they weren’t the people Faith had known when she’d died. “Am I actually hearing this right?” she asked, not caring to keep the contempt out of her voice. “You figure something’s happening to vampires and it’s not your problem? What, like this is the Council for people who don’t give a shit about what happens so long as it doesn’t interrupt your coffee break?” How was it that Faith had never got an education, didn’t have a soul, but still figured it better than any of these people that someone messing with vampires was pretty much bad news? Maybe the whole lot of them were in remission, maybe the demons kept out of people’s way if they weren’t feral and off breeding by a Hellmouth, but the balance was tentative. Vampires were touchy. Right now things were as easy for them as it was for the Slayers, but it wasn’t exactly going to take much to get them ripping out throats again.

If this was the way the world was going, they were in trouble. Big time.

And, honestly, right then Faith thought it would teach them a lesson if they were all the first to die. “Do any of you even bother thinking anymore?” she demanded, stabbing a finger to the side of her head. “D’you think this is why everybody died? So you guys could sit around here swimming in some old British guys’ cash? Back in the day this guy and Buffy –”

She was cut off by Sash, his voice riding over hers. “We stopped working for Buffy Summers back in 2010. We don’t need –”

But Faith rode right back, leaping from the desk back onto her feet. There was a growl in her throat and it got the Slayers, at least, rising to their feet. “You don’t ever know what you’re gonna need, so shut the fuck up.” She put a foot on one of the chair’s wheel spindle and shoved Sash out of the way, heading back out of the door before she started a fight none of the rest of them would win. Hinges complained as she smacked straight through the panelled glass.

If they could all just work out that she actually gave a shit about their asses, she figured she wouldn’t want to kill them quite so much. But it had always been the same. Human fucking complacency. None of them knew what it was like to make the choice.

* * *

_**June 2012, San Francisco CA** _

When Faith rose again, she’d been pissed off. 

Because the thing was, it shouldn’t have killed her, that patrol. She’d been doing better and there was no way she’d wanted to die. As she’d drunk down her killer’s blood, all she’d been thinking was that there was no fucking way that her life was allowed to be over. After the twenty years she’d wasted as a child, being useless, being at least some grade level of evil, it did not get to be that some bozo footnote in vampire history struck her down at the nothing age of thirty-two, damning her to rot on some nothing page of Slayer nobodies.

When she’d risen, damp from the air in some mildewed basement apartment – the sort of place she’d started out the first time – Faith decided to skip the part where she had to fuck or kill her way into a halfway pleasant bed and go straight to trying out the good guys. She’d done the evil thing before, and the fact was Buffy’s team got better towels. And sheets. And hand lotion, which you needed after a night out in the winter. You couldn’t be evil and have pepper-jasmine scented hands.

So bozo vamp bit the dust within about three words of his Welcome to the Damned speech, and Faith hightailed it back to the Council. She figured all she could hope was that they hadn’t had time to blitz her computer account, because there was some important shit on there.

Sneaking onto site, Faith didn’t risk crossing the wards, but she was able to get onto the roof, heading immediately to the skylight over the main meeting room. There was a blind they were meant to use, but no one ever did. Even the good guys could get complacent.

Generally she meant to eavesdrop, to figure out the lay of the land before she made her approach. But in the silence she found her mind drifting. Watching everybody swarm around below her was the first thing that made her realise she was dead, actually fully properly dead, never going to be alive again. And a snarl ripped through her, straight from her gnawing stomach to her throat and she was pissed off, hungry and hormonal.

It consumed her. She’d been expecting for it to consume her, but it had taken that little while. And while she was conscious of it happening, because she knew how vampires worked, it didn’t stop the fact that her situation was motherfucking unfair. She was the oldest Slayer on the books, the best now that B had gone off-roster. She’d had respect. She’d had the mission. She’d had everything she could have ever wanted and now one mistimed punch had landed her with the _goddamn undead_.

Before she could even think about it, Faith was punching the glass underneath her and falling through, an animal’s raw ripping her face apart as she curled and rolled to land on all fours amongst the glass.

She shook the fragments from her clothes, feeling pain where she was cut, smelling blood. In the shock and unsubdued anger she felt threatened as people started moving, hungry and unfed as their hearts pounded in her ears, just full of the red rage. She heard the twang of a crossbow and caught the bolt in mid-air, right on instincts she still had, rolled away and grabbed hold of the nearest body amongst the blurry crowd of people. It was in front of her like a shield and she growled again; the blood was pounding harder and she could smell her captive’s sweat, their fear, the traces of pepperoni pizza on their hands where they grabbed faintly at her wrist and the peppery scent of coffee on their breath…

It all good enough to eat – and they’d threatened her _first_ , so who the hell could hold her on self-defence? But then Faith’s ears were ringing with a single, authoritative shout.

_“Everybody **STOP!** ”_

The cacophony halted. Faith’s head felt like someone had loosed it from a tether. The pulse of blood still drummed in her ears and still she was hungry, but part of her remembered that this wasn’t really what she’d meant to do.

“Faith,” the voice came again. “Look at me. And lose the bumpies.” Woozily, Faith raised her eyes and tried to relax her face. Standing right in front of her was Buffy, face set with that hard look she hadn’t worn for ages – and with a shiver, almost like she’d been splashed with cold water, Faith felt the bones of her skull shift into some other order.

It was really weird, how different the world suddenly looked. The colours were brighter, but everything else suddenly flattened out – the angles of things, the sounds and smells around her. It felt like she was watching TV. It didn’t feel natural.

“You know,” she said, thinking out loud, finding it all kind of funny, “your pet vampires made this whole thing seem a lot less difficult.”

There was a teeny-tiny wrinkle of skin which flinched in the corner of Buffy’s eye, and Faith remembered that Buffy didn’t like thinking about the vamps who’d disappeared; still felt a bit burned about it. But she didn’t feel guilty for saying it; not at all. It was kind of hilarious. And weird.

“Faith,” Buffy repeated, overly-serious. Didn’t she get the joke? “Are you going to kill Caridad or not?”

“Huh?” Faith asked, not sure where that had come from. As Buffy made a pointed glance down, however, Faith realised she was still holding her second-in-command under a death grip and getting a buzz off how she smelled. “Oh, right. No way!” She let her go, the muscles in her hands a little reluctant. “Sorry, C.”

“No worries,” Caridad replied, like it was an automatic response – before she spun around and took it back, “I mean, get your fucking hands off me!” She pointed a finger, face drawn inside a frame of scraped back hair.

The finger pointing hurt. As did the expressions on everybody else’s faces as Faith looked around. There was her group – Troy and Sash; Amy, Shiv, Taya and M – all holding weapons. Dawn had a sword, back to the bookcase.

The only person unarmed was Buffy. Though she was bound to be packing something somewhere. “But I was gonna say,” Faith promised, meeting B’s eyes again. “You know, therapy works!”

Now, Faith had known Buffy a long time, so a lot of the time she could work out what the other Slayer was thinking. This was no exception. There were regrets Buffy had by the shitload, mostly about the way she’d treated a certain on-again-off-again fuckbuddy-slash-life partner, who just so happened to be a vampire with a cute ass and a name like a dog. And, sure, Spike had a soul, but as far as everyone could tell he was basically the same as he’d always been. (B claimed he was actually different when it was just them, but that had been true before the soul as well, so wasn’t anybody’s business – something something, entitlement TMI.)

After this certain vampire had disappeared, Miss Buffy had decided to change her life. She’d quit the Watcher’s Council and gone into high school counselling for real – and for the most part seemed pretty mellow. But Faith still got the feeling she was wound up tight about stuff she’d done and thought when she was younger. After all, if anyone knew about teenage issues, it was Faith.

So, when Buffy asked, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Faith found it pretty easy to read between the lines. The line was spoken like a hard-ass, but hope was feeding the whole question. “Are you actually…?” These days, Buffy didn’t want to believe in destiny.

And Faith never had, so she was hoping they’d be able to get along OK. Honestly, with her human face on, there was a worry at the back of her mind about what she’d do if she had to go off alone. Also if she didn’t get anything to eat soon, but that was something to think about when she wasn’t dead.

Before Faith could reply to Buffy, however, little Dawn spoke up. “Goddammit, Buffy, don’t listen to her. We went through all this with Kerry.”

Faith glared, annoyed. She’d thought Dawn liked her. “Hey!” she said. “If I wanted to eat half a sorority I’d have gone straight to campus.” It almost sounded like a good idea, actually. Those girls were bitches. They looks they must have had on their faces when Kerry came back to haunt them… “But I didn’t!” Faith caught herself, looking around again at the meeting table where she’d fallen, the shards of glass spread like glitter. Everybody’s judgemental faces. “I came back here to you guys, because I was hoping maybe you’d have a little sympathy… I’m freaking _dead_ here!”

There was a sob from one of the younger Slayers in the room. Faith couldn’t remember her name, but she’d been in Faith’s dirty tricks class, just for the compulsory part before she’d switched completely to research. Mandy? Was that her name? She had big ringlets and was officially Faith’s favourite person right then. If it came to a fight, she wouldn’t get eaten.

 _No,_ she remembered. None of them would get eaten. It wasn’t a guilt thing, it was a simple life, no complications, hand lotion thing. She’d do the part where she played a pain in the ass in a crypt, but she wasn’t killing people. Just like she’d thought back in the nights when she’d figured dying was a possibility.

“How can we trust you?” Caridad interrupted her thoughts, speculative and still damn hurtful. There was a stake in her hand – the one Faith had given her a few weeks ago.

In a surge of desperation, Faith swore, “Because I’m me!” Ever since Robin had transferred out East, C had been the one Faith had spent most time with. How could she have the hate in her eyes? They all knew vamps didn’t have to kill these days. It was getting harder for them to do it discreetly. “I can do what the hell I like. You know it, everybody knows it.” She glared around the room, disheartened to see there was only one expression looking at her without the hate, and it was the one Slayer with whom Faith figured she’d never be properly friends. “I didn’t think you’d all be so quick to want to get rid of me!”

Faith hated feeling powerless. She hated it. But they were all bringing it back on her, she could see it on their faces. Forty-eight hours she’d been dead and they’d already damned her out of the life she’d made for herself, telling her to go back to the gutter and live with the rest of the filth. And, really, part of her was surprised it had taken this long – but her therapist had said, because she’d got one for the divorce; her therapist had said she had to take things as they were, keep trusting people and expect the best while she let go of disappointment. But it obviously meant jack shit and she was so _hungry_ …

“Have you eaten, Faith?” Buffy was talking to her again. Faith opened her eyes to look at her and knew her face had slipped. Buffy didn’t seem to mind – and her stern face was even more angular now. She smelt like fucking lighter fuel, but it still made Faith’s mouth water.

“Does it look like I’ve eaten?” she snarled. All she wanted was for things to stay the same; why couldn’t she just get a break?

Whatever the answer, there was no pity at all on B’s face. She told her, no mercy. “It’s easier when you’ve fed, but you have to control it. You’re always gonna have to.” She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. But then B had always struck Faith like someone who had nothing good for pillow talk. “D’you think you can?” came the final question, and Faith knew it was make or break.

So she told her the truth. “That was the plan. Although, I’ve gotta say I’m feeling less and less…”

Quickly, Buffy shook her head, and Faith realised that Buffy had actually made up her mind already. This was just for show and - was that _humour_ in her eyes, like they were sharing a joke? B was so fucking twisted.

Before Faith could tell her, though, and before anyone could complain, Buffy came out with a statement that would change the course of the Watcher’s Council forever. Faith could never tell how she made it look so easy. Or if she even realised how much it pissed other people off.

“I’ll watch out for her,” was what Buffy said, assuming her old authority and staring down dissent around the room. No one said anything, but Dawn rolled her eyes. She did look a tiny bit proud. “If she’s too strong for you, Caridad,” Buffy continued, “then we can’t make her do anything anyway.” Caridad shrugged, like she might’ve been a little relieved – but she always had been a cagey bitch. As Buffy finished, there were no complaints. “We can’t keep throwing away opportunities like this.”

Part of Faith resented that she was now in debt to B’s old guy, not least because of that time he’d punched her in the face. But she’d take it. And she hoped Buffy realised she’d do her turn if he ever came back.

Or, hell, she’d try at least.

* * *

_**November 2014, San Francisco CA** _

Control. That was thing, Faith thought, as she pummelled the Council’s punching bag. It was all very easy to want it, even easier to say that you could have it, but not always that easy to exercise, especially when there seemed like very little reward for doing the right thing.

She always tried to think long-term. Ever since she’d got out of prison, she’d made certain she had plans, to keep her on the straight and narrow. She’d even done the whole commitment thing, sticking with Robin and thinking about how their life would work out together, ten years down the line – only for him to decide that _he_ couldn’t do being married to her anymore, couldn’t handle the pressure or her fit and kick-ass bod or the fact she wasn’t actually his mother and didn’t plan on acting noble so he could get off on someone like her finally loving him enough.

Buffy had always had it easy. All the guys were lining up to change themselves just to be worthy of her, but no one ever changed themselves for Faith. No one would make even the most basic concession. Spike and Angel, they’d kept up with Buffy for years, while as far as she knew Robin hadn’t even sent a single greeting’s card for her.

Well, she didn’t need him. She didn’t need her crew. She didn’t even need Buffy, who had her pet project back now and wouldn’t need Faith to help him out. Faith couldn’t even get a straight answer out of people she’d worked with for years.

Hunger was meant to be the worst of it, but it wasn’t. Faith knew that, as her knuckles started to bleed and made her stomach growl. The bloodlust was just desire, another bodily impulse you could order and shape into line if you wanted it enough. It was the control you had to keep a hold on, the reasons for you to keep it. Without that, you had nothing.

“Bad day?” a question came from behind her, sneaking in between punches.

Faith spun around, not totally surprised to see Ivy, the only other vampire who usually found herself in the building. She’d started off a contact, but then the witches had said a vampire helped out their casting balance, so everyone had relented. They were way less judgemental in Spellcasting.

“Same as usual,” Faith replied to her question, wiping some sweat of her forehead – because that still happened if a vamp worked hard enough.

Ivy nodded, setting a carton of coconut water in the treadmill and pressing some buttons to get going. There was an expanse of gym between them, but thanks to their demonic perks it was easy to hold a conversation. “That bad, huh?” Ivy added, proving a point, and Faith remembered she was one of those vampires who’d somehow made it to demonhood without the rage. Just the urge to run through her despair. Or something. They really had nothing in common. “I still can’t believe you’ve never killed someone.”

“Only while I was alive,” Faith said shortly, turning back to the bag. “Kind of made myself a promise down in prison. Don’t see much point in breaking it.”

“I sometimes think I should’ve taken it up,” Ivy twittered inanely. “Then I wouldn’t have to deal with all the idiots in my department. Sometimes you’ve gotta work it off, you know?”

It was an invitation to a pity party, but Faith couldn’t be fucked to take it up. She grunted in solidarity, but otherwise got back to punching. Other people weren’t her biggest problem – at least not her colleagues. She didn’t care about that junior high bullshit. Especially since her junior high experience had been really more about vodka and underage sex. It was herself – remembering to go on when they treated her like shit. Because she wasn’t shit. She didn’t have to be. However it was they spoke to her.

A few punches later, Faith had had enough. It was hard to work out the stuff in her head when all she could hear behind her was some ex-beach bunny squeaking rubber like a prom queen giving head. It was only going to get her more angry.

“So,” Faith started the conversation up again, turning back around. “You heard anything from the vamps in town?” She could be a good little Nancy Drew, whoever the hell that was. Big-ass teeth wasn’t all there was to her. “Apparently some chick’s spreading rumours about the government and I saw this guy earlier who’s been starved out of his wits.”

“Huh,” Ivy replied, pumping her arms as she jogged. She was wearing freaking pastels. Faith had thought they burned vamps even harder than the cross. “Oh, you know what?” she added. “One of my girlfriends did just take a job in a bar downtown – V19? – and she was saying something the other night about this guy making noise about the NSA. I’m sure he wants a panic, but pur-lease…” Ivy rolled her eyes. “Didn’t we do this paper round already?”

“Is he serious, d’you think?” Faith asked. She made a mental note of the bar name. Because if it was the same guy as Taya’s then that was one hell of an over-used pick-up line… “D’you think it’s gonna go anywhere?”

Ivy shrugged, chugging her natural electrolytes. “I don’t know,” she said more seriously. I mean, I find it kind of surprising more vamps don’t fall off the wagon anyway. They’re all so violent as it is.” It was a weird thing, when someone’s empathy got removed. Demons like Ivy couldn’t even understand the ones who got cravings for something more than full-fat fro-yo. “You wonder what keeps them going.”

Sometimes Faith wasn’t even sure herself. She didn’t have philosophy and she sure as hell didn’t have religion. The yoga back in prison had made her even more inclined to hit stuff. “But I don’t know,” she said, feeling some of that determination she sometimes got. “The two of us have lasted this long – and I don’t see what makes us so special.”

Ivy shrugged again, as if to say she didn’t see what was so special about Faith either. But Faith didn’t take that personally. People didn’t, as a rule – and she was long done letting that hold her back.

.


	3. Spike

_**January 2010, Los Angeles CA** _

A week after coming back from Buffy’s, Spike sat in his apartment, trying to ignore the scent of her still lingering on some unwashed clothes. The cursor taunted him from the laptop screen, but he’d only got as far as _Happy new year!_ and now he was stuck. He couldn’t concentrate. The noise of the night was loud, flooding in through the window because he was still English enough to enjoy a breeze and the flat was unseasonably warm. He could hear too many people in the apartment building, clambering up stairs and slamming doors; he could smell all their cooking, the Chinese takeaway and the chicken bones filling the bucket they’d left in the hall.

It was always like this after he went to see her. He’d told himself it would the last time, this time, but he wasn’t sure he’d manage to hold himself to that promise. Listening to the night he could only think of her trying to sleep in the cold, joking with him about that Mamas & Papas song…

He should have told her. He knew that. She’d wonder where he’d gone eventually, even if it wasn’t this week or the next. Six months was a long time, and while he wanted out of Los Angeles and the whole bloody subroutine he’d found himself stuck in, he knew it wasn’t entirely fair to go without saying goodbye. A different quality of goodbye.

His phone rang then, chirping like Poe’s sodding raven. Giving into the inevitable and drawing one last deep sigh, Spike tossed his laptop down the bed and leaned over to pick the thing up with one yank on the charger cable. It was Angel, because of course it was.

“Evening, Batface,” Spike corralled, rolling his eyes as he leaned back against the headboard. “What’s happened now?”

“They want a year.”

As usual, Angel didn’t bother with greetings. He got straight to the point. Unfortunately, Spike knew exactly what he was talking about, so he couldn’t even complain. “A _year?_ ” he demanded, stomach sinking as his eyes drifted back to the half-started email. It was worse than demons, dealing with the government. “First you drag us into this mess with all their national-duty, debt-to-society bollocks and now you’re signing us up for a bleeding _year?_ ”

“It’s called forced labour, Spike,” Angel came back at him impatiently. “Emphasis on the force. They've done it before and I am sure they’ll do it again. We go along, we help track down a few nests and they let us both off for another few decades.”

“A year is still a bloody long time.” Spike had heard the submarine story about a hundred times in the last few weeks, so he knew Angel thought he’d got this whole situation figured out. But frankly, Spike was not convinced. “I know you’re getting on a bit –” And, right, two-hundred and fifty years had to be hell on the old ego. “– but spare a thought for those of us who still keep up with the mortal coil, yeah? I still don’t see how the ruddy plan is meant to work… The Initiative tried it once and look where it got them. Not to mention bloody me!”

Angel harrumphed down the line. Spike knew he was as much of a broken record as Angel was, but he couldn’t stop his mind racing with worry. It was only because Angel would be going too – the slipperiest wanker in the Northern Hemisphere – that Spike had even thought to conscience it.

And a year… A year was too long. He couldn’t leave Buffy that length of time, even if he had the vain and selfish hope that a break might be just the thing they needed. He owed Dawn an email. Hell, he couldn’t even really leave Harris twelve months without some sort of stinging gif to undermine his masculinity. Just because Angel was reeling from Nina running out on him it didn’t mean Spike was left with no one either.

But before Spike could get to the end of that train of thought, the old man himself was off again. “I don’t see how it could be any more straightforward,” Angel was complaining. “We help them take out the biggest threats so there’s no one to mobilise the remaining population. Then if they can’t contain this stuff about PHM all they have to manage are the docile remnants.”

“And what are they going to do about all the rats who go fleeing to the border?” Spike challenged, because it seemed like an obvious problem to him. Even before they got started on the ulterior motives.

But Angel had an answer for that too. “Apparently they’ve got agreements with Canada and Mexico… But unofficially I don’t think they care.”

That, Spike supposed, was a point. Anxious, he stood up and walked over to the window, looking down at the busy streets below. As the people went driving by he couldn’t help but wonder how many lives this might save, if it all came off. With the potential resources the agencies had… “But it doesn’t seem natural, does it?” He couldn’t get that off his mind. “Even if it works out exactly like they say, you can’t wipe out evil in one clean swipe.”

Angel hmmed, like he’d spent ten years in a gutter thinking precisely about that question. Spike rolled his eyes, but he still listened. “That’s the thing about nature,” he pronounced, pulling his favourite melancholic voice. “It’s not _nature_ that brings about balance; that’s just the equilibrium that comes from fighting for the same thing. It’s all a side-effect. Nature… It’s about survival. It’s about adaptation. It’s the group and the other. And ever since the Slayers…” He paused, and Spike took a moment to remember the brave new world they lived in was less than ten years old. Angel continued, “Vampires are going to change one way or another; they have to or they’ll be wiped out. Ten years from now they’ll be smarter, more organised, more deadly. Unless…”

“Unless what?” Spike interrupted. “We take them out now?” He shook his head, shooing a that buzzed towards his face. Maybe they could kill a few hundred; maybe they could put the Council to shame and really make a dent – but they others; they’d always go to ground. They’d always be out there. “It can’t be done.”

“No,” Angel seemed to agree. “But this plan… They think it’ll have them subdued in twenty years. I just think… If they lose what strength they had in numbers and the humans are on the look-out, don’t you think some of them will try to fit back into society?”

Spike snorted, uncertain he could believe what he was hearing. “You think the demon’s that weak? We _never_ would’ve gone for that.”

“Right.” Angel didn’t sound convinced. He never did when Spike spoke. “And those weeks you spent in Giles' bathtub, mooning after Buffy...”

“That is a conflation of two extremely different situations.” But nonetheless, that was the moment Spike felt himself waver. He found himself remembering all the shit vampires he’d dismissed over the years. The suck-whores and the bite-boys, the Harmonies (though none quite as ditzy as the original) and that bookish bloke minion he’d had back before his name had fallen. He thought about the really dark days when Buffy had been newly alive again and he’d wondered whether loving her wasn’t simply a survival strategy to help him put up with the pain and humiliation.

It was probably that last thought why he never did get round to emailing.

* * *

_**November 2014, Oakland CA** _

He could have cried when he woke up in Buffy’s bed, but he didn’t. Instead, he just lay there for a moment, frozen with the realisation of where he was. It was the scent of warm blood which had woken him, steaming gently from the mug Buffy held in her hands. “Sorry,” she said, holding it out to him. “We’ve got a better microwave these days. I left it in too long.”

Spike didn’t care, just took it and swallowed the whole lot down, squeezing her hand in thanks. It wasn’t enough to make him feel full, not in the least, but it was enough to get him feeling like himself again.

“Would you like some more?” Buffy asked him when he was finished, her eyes all sad and worried with her hair tucked behind her ears.

Of course Spike wanted more. He needed more; still felt starving. But for the moment he didn’t care. “Not right now,” he denied himself, shaking his head. The words came out roughly, irritating his throat. He wasn’t sure what that was about, but he had a horrible feeling like his lungs hard started rotting a bit in the last week or so. As it was, he’d breathed more than enough damp air. With any luck that would fix itself first. “Just – I need to tell you…”

Looking down, Spike was surprised when Buffy eased into the bed beside him. But he took what blessings he was given, sinking back down to rest his head by hers on the pillow. He’d forgotten what her face looked like up close. “Tell me,” she said, radiating warmth as she took hold of his hands again. “Just skip the parts with fawning priestesses or whatever.”

That made him laugh, which gave him the courage to get started. The thing was, he could only narrate the whole thing like it was some grand old adventure. More so than when he’d lived it, the images came vividly into his mind’s eye – the sweeping vistas as they travelled. Angel’s petty fiddling with the radio. The cities and the hub where they always found themselves back again. Nothing about the people involved, because they’d never got to know anyone. And nothing about where the big oaf himself was now, because Spike didn’t want to think about it.

He didn’t talk about how he was in trouble. Nor about how hungry he was, how delicious Buffy looked to him where she was bundled up in her sheets. The whole thing was as predictable as a bloody Tom Clancy novel, so the story tripped off his tongue like he was selling it. By the time he’d got to the end of the year, the part where they’d discovered not all vamps got to meet their maker but found themselves in a windowless correction unit, it was all just too inevitable. Right down to the part where he and Angel found themselves locked up.

That was the point when Buffy left to cook him up some more food. Spike listened to her downstairs, pottering around more than she needed to, frustratedly pacing as the microwave whirred. There was one recognisable sob.

What Spike couldn’t work out was why. He hadn’t even counted up for her how many deaths they’d overseen, how by the time they’d mechanised the holy water hose it all just seemed so heartless. In his head he knew he had lengthy reflections to tell her about the nature of unspoken imprisonment, where everyone knew you couldn’t leave but it was never said out loud – the difference between that and the part where they carted you away to live in a cell on three rations a day, the doctors running weekly tests.

Fucking hell, Spike was hungry. And Buffy knew – knew exactly how unnatural that was. She’d said she’d be right back, but it was taking her so long. He felt ready to gnaw his own arm off and he could feel it, the energy from the blood he’d consumed leaching away into the aether. Just gone.

It made him shudder, once, as Buffy appeared back in the doorway with two tall mugs on a polka dotted tray. Chin held high and motionless, she set it down on the bedside table and passed him the first pint. “Where is Angel now?” asked him straight, because apparently she’d had enough storytelling for one night.

For a moment, Spike thought maybe Angel was the reason for the crying jag. But one look in her eyes told him he was being petty. “I don’t know,” he told her instead, hand shaking around the mug handle. He drank – just so it wouldn’t be wasted, but it didn’t help much with the tremors. “I lost track him not long after they let us go.”

Buffy looked down, nodding once. It was the first time since he’d found her again that Spike actually thought she looked old. There were lines on her face, many of which she’d had since the First Evil, some of which he’d never seen before. As she pursed her lips, the line it drew was thin and tired. But when she spoke, none of that mattered, and it got to him just as much as it ever had before. “I just think,” she said, taking her time over the thought. He clenched the mug between both hands. “I just think of all the friends I have now. Vampire friends. And I just think of how many – people died so I could have them. How many I had to kill before we got to this point. How many extra now who’ve gone.”

Sometimes Spike thought the same thing and it made his vision go blank to think it. His cellmates at the end in there, Biggy and Smalls and Davie Mac, they hadn’t been his friends, but they’d still been his people. The three of them were out there somewhere, released just like him and the others, and they would be just as hungry, only without any comfy Buffy beds to sustain them. “But it’s not like we gave you a choice, was it?” Spike asked, not sure whether he should have said ‘they’. The soul didn’t seem important at times like this. Forcibly he raised his eyes back to her hers. “That’s the whole twisted logic behind this business: vampires’ll murder as soon as look at you. They’re spooks, little more than leftovers, so you have to tame them, one way or another. And if you don’t then the feral animal is too dangerous to leave on its own.”

There was silence for a little while as Buffy seemed to think it over. Drinking more of his blood, shutting his eyes, Spike almost believed what he was saying. The problem was, he could never quite get himself feeling the conviction on that vampires-as-animals analogy. Angel was usually all right with it, Spike remembered from conversations they’d had before, but it always seemed too simple for him. There was no animal with quite the same intelligence as a vamp, not the memories and not the knack to fit back in with human society right up until the time they wanted to strike. There was no animal that looked the same and smelt the same and thought and spoke the same as its prey, no animal whose brutality rested on such human emotions. They were the dark side of the fucking force, vampires. They didn’t even make sense to demons.

“Faith came straight back, you know,” Buffy said then, passing him the second mug of blood. He shouldn’t have needed it. He didn’t want it. But he took it all the same, and Buffy continued, “The circumstances have gotta be different, I guess, because she’s been facing vampires for years. Maybe because she killed people before? But she came looking for us and I couldn’t let her… Not like you. And –” She ploughed straight ahead, not stopping for a breath. “And I can’t help but think what if it’s like that for everyone? Now that people know about it a little before? What if they don’t want to leave their lives? It’s not like the whole world can be that unhappy.”

“Yeah…” Spike replied, staring down at the blood in his hands. “But that’s why…” _If only it could be that easy._ He breathed, then told her what somehow he’d always known. “You don’t go round turning any old slayer you slaughter in the street. You don’t go round turning just anyone. It’s a seduction, right? Or else it should be. Standards don’t always…” He shook his head quickly, casting off that way of thinking. “The vampires who last beyond the night, who stick around, they always think they’re getting something out of the exchange, yeah? That’s why they go for it all gung ho. It’s not just strength, immortality… It’s something intangible, something they’ve yearned for all their lives. Something…”

Glancing at Buffy, he bit the word back. He wasn’t going to say it, because he could still remember the moment Dru had caught it out of the air and looked in his eyes with the knowledge no one else had cared prise out of him before.

But Buffy was watching him, almost as knowingly, probably more so – because she’d come by her knowledge of him honestly, hadn’t she? It was disconcerting, to say the least.

And so he kept on, filling the silence, “I mean, all right, maybe it doesn’t work that way anymore. You’re all a bunch of cynics, you lot today, so the romance probably wouldn’t cut it. But you can’t force anyone to find their calling, not to evil and not to good.” Wryly he considered, “Bet they used to seduce you Slayers into it as well, back before the age gap got nasty… What did they do for you?” he asked Buffy, suddenly curious because he’d never heard this story. “Probably some Karate Kid postmodern Joseph Campbell bollocks, right? Just said you were the chosen one and waited for you to give up everything in the pursuit of being a hero.”

It made her laugh, at least, though there was something in her eyes that left him on edge. “Pretty much,” was all she said. But then she looked down at his mug which seemed all too empty and told him, “You still haven’t said why they let you and Angel go.”

And he froze, remembering it again.

* * *

_**October 2014, Unknown location** _

It was dark when they woke up. A whole group of them, some vamps Spike had never seen before, his cellmates and, of all people, Angel – whom he hadn’t seen in months.

They weren’t in Nevada anymore, if that was even where they’d been at the end. In any case, the whole climate was different here; the air cooler, damp enough that it clung to his nostrils. They were in a forest somewhere, lying on mulch and fungus and twigs. There was birdsong, nightjars or something, then maybe an owl.

Spike woke up slowly, looking at the bodies around him. Angel was already stood up; the two of them apparently the first to recover from whatever they’d been drugged with. “Any idea where we are?” Spike asked, clambering up onto his underused joints. His feet didn’t feel solid in his boots, like they would quickly become blistered and sore after a simple stroll. All of him felt entirely too soft.

Of course, he wasn’t going to let that on to Angel. Just like he wasn’t going to let on that it was almost a relief to see the fat fucker. After a century in and out of each other’s company Spike felt he had the right to forgo the pleasantries.

Angel seemed to agree, scowling like his jacket still cost eight-hundred dollars. “No,” he said simply. “But it feels like a long way and it’s meant to feel like that. Taking us out of the desert into here was no accident.”

“What?” Spike replied, feeling the pockets of his own abused army surplus. Of course he’d run out of fags months ago, but nothing else seemed to be missing. “This is a powerplay, you reckon? To prove what they can do?”

It was a weird sort of prison, the one they’d been in. There was never any change to the intake – no one leaving, no one joining – but the staff changed over frequently. The only things that visibly aged had been the furniture, and that had been replaced and maintained on some sort of basis. They’d never had to do anything – nothing to justify tax payers’ expenditure – just submit to tests like lab rats unconscious of what tests were being performed. Violence was allowed between vampires, but there’d been little to fight about, in the end. And Angel liked his peace more than Spike liked dealing with upstarts, so early on there had been a general descent into hopelessness. Vampires had oddly domitable spirits.

Spike had spent most of his time watching TV and playing Street Fighter with Biggy. It had been a bit like the year before Joyce had died, only without Joyce. Or Dawn. Boredom, though, had certainly turned most of his thoughts about Buffy back into obsessive fantasies, so with a few bouts of random violence that had almost been the same.

Speaking of women, though – there were some of them out here as well. Spike had always wondered if they’d kept the female vampires somewhere too. There were six of them, which with the blokes made twelve vamps in total – either the lucky chosen few or one group of several. There’d been many more of them back in the desert.

One of the women was getting up. “Oh fantastic,” she said, massaging her temples. “It’s the Aurelius boys. God be praised.” There was a Caribbean lilt to her voice and apparently she had a greatly underdeveloped sense of irony. “Why is it everywhere I go there’s always some mess you two have left there waiting for me, hmm?”

Spike raised an eyebrow. She was hot, this vampire, tall and slender with her hair peaking like a quiff over her forehead, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her before in his life. “Do we know you?” he asked pointedly.

She stared straight back. “I would hope not.” Spike didn’t pay her much mind. Vampires were always the same once they reached a certain age… You always tended to run to each other at some point passing around the world and if you pissed someone off once or twice they never did bother to forget it. _Maybe that party Dru and I crashed back in the ‘86…_ But she didn’t seem to want to dwell, continuing, “Have they let us go or not? I could do with someone to eat.”

Because now that Naomi Campbell mentioned it, Spike realised he was feeling a bit peckish as well. “Angel?” he asked. “D’you ever read GQ’s Guide to the Wilderness on one of your lonely nights in? Otherwise we’re going to have a problem…”

“No,” Angel replied, still glowering. He was definitely trying to figure out the catch. Spike was mostly trying to suppress panic. It was working quite well.

As more and more vampires woke up, it dawned pretty quickly that they were going to have to find shelter. The night was young, but it felt like summertime, so they wouldn’t have forever. But more importantly, as they started looking, they realised they needed food. A little more desperately than usual.

“We’re warm, you know,” Angel said dismally as Terry the ex-Scout Leader got them all together looking for deer tracks. “D’you feel it? The night’s not moving fast enough for this sort of temperature. That means we’re warm.”

“Or maybe the weather’s unseasonal,” someone on Spike’s other side piped up, not without sarcasm. It made Spike think back to those last few nights in his apartment, those balmy days he’d wasted. Was this really freedom they’d found now? 

“Does it matter if we get more night?” someone else was asking. “I’m goddamn hungry.” Spike couldn’t help but agree.

And they _were_ warmer, from what Spike could tell. It was usually difficult to move around other vampires in deep darkness, because there was no real way to sense them. But now, Spike thought he could have a good stab at telling where people were, how their bodies filled the surrounding space.

“Metabolism,” came Smalls’ weaselly, ex-science teacher voice, like a death knell. “If they sped it up, that would do it. We’d need to eat more, because we’d be burning energy quicker.”

“You mean… “ One of the other voices began, but then they were trailing off. For a moment there was silence, as the reality of it all sank in, but then everyone seemed to speak at once.

“Why would they do that?”

“How is that possible?”

“What’s in it for them?”

“How can you even guess that? It could be hundreds of things, for sure.”

“We should’ve guessed that was what they were doing. Experiments!”

“I’m writing to my representative. I don’t care if you wanna call us dead or not; he’s gonna listen.”

“That’s it. Bring on the Slayers. I am slaughtering every single meatsack I meet from now until the end of days. Gotta get some of the bastards somehow…”

“I am not listening to this.” Now _that_ was Naomi. “You enjoy the next season of _Survivor_ ; I’ll be getting out of here and I don’t want to see any of you following me.”

And with that, she was stomping off into the forest. Spike looked to where he knew Angel was, though he couldn’t quite make him out.

“Wait!” Ex-Scout Leader called after her. “We have to stick together!”

“Yeah,” some bloke with a deep voice backed him up. It was the same one who wanted meatsacks to murder. “It comes down to it, we’re pack animals aren’t we? They might’ve kept us in cages but now we’re out a bit of hunger can’t keep us in line.”

“Speak for yourself, lunkhead,” one of the other women vamps spoke up. “I’m not a pack animal. I’m a _vampire_ – and Clarice is right. I’m done scrabbling around in the dirt like a pig.”

Lunkhead seem to take exception to this and Spike wondered whether he should intervene, but the moment he made a move there was a scuffle, snarls like lions, but then the sound of one heavy lump of flesh falling to the ground and a foot grinding into face.

“You shouldn’t have tried that,” she spoke again, clear and deadly. After that there was only the tell-tale sound of a stake plunging into sinew and the sharp exhale the demon made when it was sent back down to hell.

There were a few of them around these days, ex-slayers, and Spike wondered, as she left, whether that was who this person was. His feet actually started to go with her, brain haring down the path that if people knew her in whatever Council outpost they came to, then she could maybe get him inside; she could maybe get him to some information about Buffy…

Because that was where he needed to go, wasn’t it? He needed to get to her, to tell her he was out, to stop her moving on with whatever life she’d concocted in the time he’d been away, to apologise that he’d never sent her that last email, that he’d never told her where he’d gone, that he’d been thinking of her and waiting, always waiting just…

“No,” suddenly Angel said, cutting through Spike’s thoughts. “I know what you’re thinking, and no.”

“Huh?” asked one of the other vampires, male.

But Spike ignored them; they barely did seem like people when he couldn’t see and they spoke shite. “What d’you mean ‘no’?” He let his human face drop for a minute, marking Angel’s figure now and noticing when people moved away from him. For a moment it was distracting, as he wondered why he hadn’t done this before (he could tell several others had) – but then he got back on track. “You got a different plan, have you? Trundle back to Los Angeles and mope around like we’re still relevant?”

Fuck, Spike definitely felt hungry now. It was worse like this.

And Angel seemed to think that was reason enough to stay in the woods. “We can’t go out there. Not until we know what’s going on. At this rate we’ll be starving by the time we meet anyone and they’ll be watching – you know they’ll be watching. And if vampires are public knowledge by now that’ll be just the news they want out there – that something’s sending us ravening. And if we crack…”

“Oh man…” One of the observing vampires said. “That’s gonna freak the vamps out and the humans just as bad. It’ll be like war…”

On another day, Spike might have taken the argument more rationally and come up with a clear headed response. The thing was, it was that day and that moment. His reactions were still a little sluggish from the drugs; it had just been intimated that he’d been fucked over by the government _again_ ; he couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow it was so dark; he was lost, tired, frustrated – and mother of Christ, he was hungry. It had been at least ten, probably nearer fifteen years since he’d signed up with Angel’s suicide adventure and he had yet to die and yet to feel any smidgeon of satisfaction from the whole affair. He’d just been freed from captivity and, ultimately, was in no mood to be told what to do.

And so Spike replied, “You know what? I don’t care. Just try and bloody stop me.” He pricked his ears and tuned into the sound of running water not so far away. He wasn’t Harrison Ford, but heading downstream still seemed like a reasonable bet of finding _some_ civilisation in the next six hours. If he was fucked, he was fucked, but he wasn’t going to sit round here waiting for it. He could lope like a gazelle.

As he thought these things, Spike was already moving. Angel called after him, but he didn’t reply or even look back. It was a testament of something that Angel didn’t physically try and keep him there.

About when the loneliness kicked in Spike found himself wondering whether it was all hopeless anyway.

.


	4. Buffy

_**November 2014, Oakland CA** _

By the time Spike came to the end of his story, Buffy didn’t know what to say. “And you knew there were Slayers out here somewhere?” she asked, unable to believe the luck she’d had in finding him.

Still caught up in his explanation, Spike eagerly shook his head. “No,” he explained. “By the time I ran into you I was just looking for blood. Got a tip about the local butcher, caught sight of the car along the way.” The full gallon was in his system now and for the moment he was rosy cheeked and almost healthy-looking, if still seriously thin. It was sad to think this amount of healing was just a harbinger of things to come. “Never figured you for a Chevy,” he added, tilting his head like he was adding it to the notes he had on her.

It made Buffy laugh, like she was twenty-five years old. “It’s Faith’s,” she said. “I’ve got this buggy yellow hatchback thing in the garage, but I don’t really drive it much.”

“Ah,” Spike nodded, and the silence was almost comfortable. They were still up in her bedroom, but they were sat on her bed now like it was a high school sleepover, duvet kicked away. Buffy had one leg hanging over the side and she swung it aimlessly, caught up in what it felt like to have him around again.

“Why did you leave?” she asked, because it was the only question she had left. “The first time?” She knew it was dangerous, but she couldn’t resist, beguiled by the ease of the moment and unable to believe it could be anything worse than what he’d already shared.

But the question immediately made the light in Spike’s face fade down into nothing. His smile was gone and he looked away, like five whole years hadn’t been enough to get over the five years they’d had before. “Is it worth raking all that up again?” he said. “I mean – tonight?”

Butterflies broke cocoons in Buffy’s stomach. “Why not tonight?” she asked. Sure, there would technically be other nights. If she had her way they would stretch on indefinitely. But it wasn’t like they could start from anywhere else than where they’d left off. All of that stuff came back to bite you eventually, she knew too well.

“Let me ask you another question,” Spike didn’t respond, watching her face seriously. Buffy stopped her leg from swinging, curled it underneath her. “Would you have me stay this time around?”

“Yes,” Buffy replied, without hesitation. Not sure what he was getting at, she spread her arms wide. “Welcome home.” Pushing Spike away had been one of her biggest regrets from pretty much the moment he’d gone out of her life, so what else could she say?

“All right then,” Spike replied, sounding wrong-footed. Not that Buffy could blame him for thinking things couldn’t be that easy. “What’s changed?” he challenged next, like that was really what he’d meant to ask.

It was a tougher question to answer. Because, honestly, Buffy couldn’t exactly pinpoint all that much. She’d loved him back then and she was pretty sure she loved him now. Her life wasn’t all that different, though she only worked four days a week. There was some weirdness, initially, when she and Faith had shared the down payment for this place, just like Buffy would have predicted there would have been. But in the last year or so things had been getting smoother as far as the authorities cared to have it smoothed in terms of identity documents and financial privileges. You couldn’t be sure that the clerk wouldn’t make some smart remark, but there was clerking that happened.

And that was what Buffy tried to explain to Spike. “Circumstances,” she said as the most concise version of her answer. “Things…” she shrugged, feeling incapable of putting it all straight into words. “Things are different now from how they were back then.”

“Right,” Spike replied – and his eyes were worryingly narrow all of a sudden. “So you’re telling me the reason everything went down the way it did was because of _circumstances_.”

“They’re important,” Buffy tried to defend herself, well aware now of the chill that had fallen on the room. “It’s society, you know? Some stuff it makes harder, some stuff it makes easier.”

“And you still care what it thinks.”

“ _No,_ ” Buffy insisted, not sure how to respond to the clench of his jaw. It didn’t look healthy, the way his face was. “I don’t mean that. I don’t mean expectations. I mean the fundamentals. I mean…” She was a little desperate, which probably explained why she didn’t express herself perfectly in the words that followed. “Vampires can be people now. They don’t have to…”

It didn’t come out right. Immediately she froze up.

“Shit; I didn’t mean…” she tried to continue. _I always thought you were a person._

But Spike cut her off, “I know exactly what you meant.”

He didn’t, though. Buffy was certain of that, even as he rose from the bed and stalked out through the door. She followed him, pretty sure he didn’t know where he was going and hoping, mostly that he wouldn’t leave the house. “Spike, wait,” she was saying as he stomped downstairs…

But whatever painful riposte he was almost certainly about to offer got cut off as Faith came back through the front door. She looked surprised to find them in the hallway. “Well, that makes things easier,” she said, looking between the two of them. Raising one eyebrow, she seemed to decide it wasn’t her problem. “Seems like one of your old inmates is making noise across the bay,” she told Spike, before looking back Buffy’s way. “Like she’s gunning for vengeance or something. I’ve got a lead on some schmuck in a bar; wanna come?”

Buffy raked her hands through her hair, trying to think. The late night was starting to get to her and she wanted to get things straight with Spike before she lost that magic moment of time reunions brought and things became weird again. Because she could remember how that worked.

But what else could she say? “I guess if we should probably shut her down as quick as possible,” she said, forcing her brain to think strategically. There were going to be a load of them, wasn’t there? A whole new element of vamps they were going to have to watch out for and figure through a way to manage. “We’ve gotta keep the story from spreading.”

“That’s what I figured,” Faith agreed, sounding vindicated. Against whom, Buffy didn’t have the mental energy to guess.

“Count me in as well,” Spike said, apparently not about to let Buffy off the hook from their conversation.

Faith did a double take at his appearance. “Are you sure?” she asked, eyes sliding to Buffy’s.

But, really, Buffy didn’t expect anything less. She had a feeling she’d be remembering this night for a long time.

* * *

_**November 2014, San Francisco CA** _

It wasn’t going to take long to get the information, Faith said, so she left them in car outside the club. And the silence was awkward. Definitely Buffy felt tired now, so for a little while she was happy for them both to keep quiet like children sitting tight for Mom. But ultimately she knew she owed Spike some conversation at the very least, whether it amounted to an explanation or not.

“You’ve always been a person to me, Spike,” she said, letting words float into the quiet. “I promise. I’m not saying that I need society to tell me who’s people and who isn’t.” She turned around on the passenger seat to look at him, smiling instinctively to see he’d wrapped his old blanket around his shoulders, like a rain-soaked marathon runner. “And – and…” She tried to recover her thread, watching him play with the blanket’s curled edges. “And I don’t want to have an argument that’s five years out of date, but it is true that things are different now. Partly because of stuff I did, but partly because the world has actually changed. People think differently in it; they put stuff together differently. What we mean to them is something different and that means we have a better chance than we ever had before.”

For a few moments, Spike said nothing. But then ice blue eyes were suddenly staring into hers. “And what about this one?” he asked stubbornly. “Is she a _person_ to you?” He sneered it, like the word was hateful to him now.

“What…” Buffy wasn’t quite sure what he meant. _Faith?_ “Who are you talking about?”

“This bint we’re off to find right now,” he told her, driving past any prevarication. “Is she a person? Does she _exist_?” He sniffed, and it was one of the most familiar Spike-like gestures she’d seen from him all night. “I’ve probably met her, you know; she probably escaped with me. Are you going to kill her? I told you one of them was a Slayer, didn’t I – you going to kill her if that’s who we’ve found?”

“I don’t…” Buffy said, shaking her head slowly and wishing she could go back in time, get her boyfriend back and sort this whole thing out from the start. “This is not actually my job anymore,” she insisted, pointing to her chest. The seatbelt strained across her shoulder. “I don’t do this, because I don’t _know!_ Because of _you!_ ” She turned her finger to his face, ready to curse his name despite the five years she’d spent longing for him to come back.

Of course, Spike had nothing to say for himself. He never did. Nothing that ever made sense, anyway. Always he used to say that he did everything for her, but Buffy couldn’t believe it. There was the wackiness you did for love, sure, but what Spike had done to himself in the time she’d known him was basically a complete overhaul of his metaphysical identity. What the hell was that? How could anyone compete with it? How could anyone _understand_ it?

Frustrated, Buffy swung back to face the windscreen and stared at the car in front of them. She couldn’t see Spike’s reflection next to her own and she was glad of it, too tired from her own navel-gazing over the years to get involved with figuring him out too.

“You know why I’m so pissed?” Spike said from behind her, just as her blood pressure was about to drop back down. She felt a guilty sense of relief. “It’s not you,” he admitted, an old trace of affection returning. “You shouldn’t think that. I just think… I think you’re right.”

“Huh?” Buffy asked, confused as she cast a glance up to the felt ceiling. Somehow it felt like the words would carry better up there. “About what?”

“About vampires,” Spike replied, morosely. “We aren’t people, never were and never should be.” He sighed, like it was something he’d known all along. “It’s not possible, right?” he added, like he’d long given up hope. “We’re dead. We start out murderers; we don’t die in a natural way. The soul can’t change that. Nothing can change that. You know –” And he was whispering now, sharing a confidence like they were never going to stop. “It must have been thousands of vamps, what Angel and I did for, but I didn’t feel a single one. Not one. What does that mean?”

Unable to resist, Buffy looked back over her shoulder again. She didn’t know what to tell him. For a start, he didn’t look like someone unaffected, and for a second… Who was she to say anything about what it was like to kill thoughtlessly, night in, night out? She tried to tell him again, “That wasn’t what I meant, about the vamps. It’s not a physical thing… It’s not about what vampires _are_.” She needed Willow back from Buenos Aires, Buffy decided, because there had to be words out there for what she meant. “It’s not about that at all,” she tried anyway with the vocabulary she had, gesturing against the shoulder of her seat. “It’s about what they do – how they fit into the world. Everything’s all – connected together and I used to try and keep it apart, you know, but I couldn’t.” How was she going to make him understand? “I couldn’t when we were together and I can’t do it for you now. And it’s not that the vamps have changed in any really fundamental way. I know I haven’t either. But what’s changed is how I see them; they way that they see me. It makes everything different.”

There was a spark of something in Spike’s eyes, something more than admiration, but Buffy knew she couldn’t place it. “If it was that easy,” he asked slowly, like he wasn’t about to let her off that easily, “why did none of this happen years ago?”

“But it’s not easy,” Buffy contradicted, knowing that first hand. He’d see it, if he stuck around, all the fear and half-forgotten memories that swirled around them everywhere. Anyone would see it, if they chose to look. “And sometimes it doesn’t help.” She felt the need to reassure him, “Everything you’ve done still means the world to me. You know that, right?”

And he smiled a small half smile, just as Faith came back with the goods. “OK!” she said as she slumped in through the door. “Cut the sexual tension and let’s get this show on the road. Vamp’s name’s Clarice and she hangs out in some bar called Oakey Joe’s.”

“Oakey Joe’s?” Buffy asked with repulsion, just as Spike asked, _“Clarice?”_ She figured his question was more important, so let the name thing go. “You know her?”

“Like I said,” Spike replied, a slight frown across his forehead. “We bonded on the way out of that hellhole. She’s old,” he added, as if that was the more pertinent observation he had to make.

“Well, what are we gonna do about her?” Faith asked, turning over the ignition. “If she’s trying to get vamps on her side then she must be up to something.”

Buffy blinked. They pulled out into traffic. “I thought we were gonna take her down?” she said, only realising as the words left her throat how outmoded that idea seemed.

Faith seemed to agree, just saying, “Oh.”

Spike said nothing.

“Was that the wrong answer?” Buffy asked, not sure what she expected as a reply. But then she didn’t get one, so it all washed out the same. The silence made her stomach sink.

* * *

_**November 2014, San Francisco CA**_

Oakey Joe’s was an oldschool dive bar, hidden off a backstreet with only a single sign to mark its entrance. It was oldschool in more than one sense of the term, as Buffy realised there weren’t only vampires down in its depths, but demons too, drinking themselves into oblivion while the neon reflected over sticky lacquered surfaces. Faith whistled at the array of drinks, while at Buffy’s side Spike growled and nodded towards a rockabilly black chick who looked like she’d stepped out of _Project Runway_.

“That’s her,” he said – and he sounded determined, though Buffy could tell how unsteady he was on his feet.

It made her hesitate. “Are you all right?” It had only been that evening that they’d found him, just a few hours since he’d been looming around like a walking skeleton. His clothes were still ugly as hell and, though Buffy was far too polite and infatuated to comment on it, the rings around his eyes were deeper than hers on a bad day. It hadn’t been so visible in the car. “We don’t have to do this tonight, you know?” Part of her was getting a bad feeling about the whole thing anyway. “It’ll wait.”

“No,” he growled, rolling his shoulders so the khaki monstrosity sat a little more like his duster around him. At least that was the effect Buffy figured her was going for. “We do this and we get out. And then…”

And then. Of course, that was the question. It had kind of crept up on her, the uncertainty. Now they were here, Buffy couldn’t help but wonder what it would mean to kill this woman. To assassinate her, though all the demons would know. To murder her.

It was something she’d done a thousand times before; the movements couldn’t be any different and Buffy could feel the stake digging into the tail of her spine. She still believed that that she’d been a force for good, back when she’d been a force of nature, and she was pretty sure that every vampire she’d killed had deserved to die.

But now that it came down to it, everything was different. It came down to this moment in a low-lit bar and everything inside her was different. What she believed was different, what she knew was different. It could never mean the same thing to put a stake through this vampire’s heart now that she’d lived with and loved them for so long. It was an altogether darker action, weighing heavily on her mind before she’d even had a chance to do it.

“Hey, Clarice!” Faith was yelling before Buffy could fully get her thoughts together. Spike stumbled as she barrelled past him, so then Buffy couldn’t even stop her – going to Spike’s aid instead. Clutching him safely to her side, then, Buffy could only watch as Faith set her feet and made herself big with pointing elbows, threatening hands. “You don’t know me, but what are you doing spreading all these rumours around getting the tinhats in a panic? Haven’t you figured out we’re the endangered species, here? It’s not gonna go well.”

“Take it out _side_ ,” the barman drawled, cleaning a glass with a rag and with a look not much unlike a _Star Wars_ extra.

Everyone ignored him, including Buffy, who hissed, “ _Faith!_ ” Really, she wasn’t quite sure why, because any element of surprise that they’d had was well and truly lost. “Goddammit.”

Spike had gone still, watching the confrontation play out. It was like he’d forgotten what it meant to start an argument in a bar. Buffy didn’t know what to make of it.

Playing to the silence, Clarice herself slipped elegantly from her barstool and turned to face them. She did in one fluid movement, full of the grace Buffy associated with older vampires. “And who the hell are you?” she asked Faith, extending the question to Buffy as well, before she recognised Spike at her side. “Never mind,” she added, rolling her eyes as she turned back for her drink. “I don’t wanna know.”

“Look, just tell us the plan, huh?” Faith said in her indoor voice, losing some of the Boston to show more of the California girl she’d become. “You’ve gotta see that it’s not gonna work.” She hiked a thumb over her shoulder, and Buffy could sense how little Faith wanted to toss Clarice back their way. “Because they’re gonna kill you, you know? Whatever plan you’ve got, it’s gonna end tonight, and I’ve got a feeling none of these guys in here are gonna care.”

“And what exactly do you want me to do?” Clarice asked, blinking slowly. Buffy could see her face clearly over Faith’s shoulder and she looked beyond unimpressed.

Faith remained squared off. “Uh,” she said. “Stop talking shit to people and let everyone get on with their lives. What d’you think _you’re_ gonna do?”

“OK, see,” Clarice replied, momentarily addressing their audience, “now, was there ever a second that you thought I don’t _have_ a plan? Hmm? Because I think that I’m insulted.” She pulled herself up high on her heels. “I’ll have you know I have been _abducted_ and tested on and cooped up for years like my great-grandmama’s old nightmares.” She glared at them in turn. “And now you’re disturbing my drink.”

“I can smell the blood on you,” Faith said then, filling the silence so Buffy didn’t have to. It sounded like she hadn’t wanted to point it out, like she regretted the truth of it.

The comment made Clarice pause mid-sip. “Oh dear, now,” she said, her voice laced with what had to be false sympathy. “You’re one of _those_ …” She sighed. “Yes, I drank a few people on my way down south. But, really, can you tell me they don’t deserve it? Any of them – those _humans_.” She nodded Buffy’s way again, drawing a murmur of approval from the other demons in the bar before she finished with her voice saccharine, “Because, sweetheart, you can kill me for my silence, but you can’t make it go away that those souls aren’t helping anybody where it matters.”

Tipping back her wine glass, Clarice finished her drink and picked up her purse from the bar like her night had simply come to an end. Buffy wondered where she was going next; what she was going to do… What they were supposed to do. There was a reason Buffy had moved on to helping teenagers with the problems they brought on themselves, rather than keep going after the creatures of the night, but it didn’t mean she’d abandoned her calling to protect the people of the world from any supernatural force that would do them harm.

For an instant Faith caught Buffy’s eye and she was begging her to figure this one out, the way she’d always figured things out before. But Buffy hadn’t; she never had. She didn’t know what to do with this world, really. Maybe if you followed one chain of causation she was the one who’d made it, forcing it into change so that evil wouldn’t consume it whole. But that was a long time ago. The consequences had long slipped through her fingers.

“You’re not leaving.”

It was Spike who spoke, stepping away from Buffy’s side. As her arm fell away it was like she was losing him for good, though she refused to accept the idea that that feeling bore any resemblance to reality. But still Buffy felt frozen, unable to intervene. Everyone around them was watching and she could feel their cold demonic eyes, their judgement.

“And how are you going to stop me?” Clarice asked him, like he was boring everyone with some esoteric plea to pedantry.

Hands in his pockets, Spike just clenched his jaw. “I’ll stop you,” he said. “Because I know what you’re feeling. That hunger, burning like you’ve just been born. The fear you’ll never be free of it again. And in the back of your mind, when you remember it, that dark, animal feeling of being caged up – which you know isn’t human, no matter how many prison dramas you’ve seen in your life. No devil on your shoulder but that demon right down inside you, yearning for revenge.” And then he shrugged. “But even without all that, the plain fact that you’re a vampire, so you figure you can just walk round killing people.” For a moment he paused, shaking his head like spinning on a dime made him dizzy. “I mean,” he recovered. “It’s some sort of argument, saying humans are all the same and they deserve to die… But it’s _shit_.”

“Have you seen this world?” Clarice asked him straight back. “Things change quickly around here. If you think you understand the balance of power, you might like to guess again.”

Maybe she was just too old, Buffy thought, but from what she’d seen over the last few years it was possible Clarice was right. It was a weird and dangerous thought, it had to be, but she honestly couldn’t remember the last vamp-led atrocity she’d seen. Not against humans at least.

“And where _is_ your sidekick?” Clarice continued, widening her eyes as if she’d just noticed who was missing. “Or are you his? I never did work that out… But don’t tell me you left him in the forest?” She clucked her tongue and Spike looked down for a moment. “One would think a soul could buy you loyalty…”

It was possible that Spike was going to act. Buffy knew that, and she knew that if he really set his mind on something then there wasn’t going to be much that she could do about it. But at the same time, she knew that she was going to have to make a decision of her own. It was the Slayer’s curse in the end, no matter how many of them there were in the world, no matter how many of them there were in the room. She was responsible for the consequences of every individual action she’d made, just like all those people who’d kept Spike imprisoned for a day, one shift of their working lives. She was alone, in all the ways that mattered.

And she could get distracted thinking about Angel abandoned in the forest, but in the end he was a grown up vampire; he’d been looking after himself centuries longer than she or Spike had been, and one of those had been in hell. Out of everyone, he was probably capable of looking after himself and would likely show up eventually.

More than that, it wasn’t what Clarice was saying that was important. It didn’t matter what arguments she made or what guilt trips she pulled in her attempt to get them all off her back – because at the heart of it, that was all this was. She couldn’t have any well-defined views about the nature of good and evil any more than they did. No; what was important right now were actions. Specifically Buffy’s judgement about what she was going to do when she walked out of here. What she was going to do in six months’ time. What she might have been doing now if she’d been living in the world these past five years.

A lot of that stuff, Buffy really had no way of knowing. She just didn’t. But she knew that if Clarice went out and killed tonight, then there wasn’t going to be much the police could do. Even if they caught up with her and even if they were really as good at dealing with vampires as the high-profile cases seemed to say they were, no humans were equipped to get around a vampire at the height of their power – not when that vampire knew who was coming.

It was basically a choice. Kill her like a demon or let her go like a person Buffy was almost tempted to believe she somehow had become.

“Buffy,” Spike was saying to her now, speaking low like he could work out exactly what conflict was going on inside her head. “If the police get her, she’ll be deadmeat anyway.”

“Yeah,” Buffy replied, not sure why she felt so much resistance to the whole idea of taking out her stake again. “But she’d be tried by a jury of her peers…” It sounded ludicrous when she said it; Buffy knew it sounded ludicrous, but she didn’t know what to do. The moment it had become a choice – the moment it had become a possibility that Buffy could let her go – it just seemed like killing had to be wrong. Killing had always been a necessity to her, not a choice, just like when it had become a choice to let Spike live with the chip, when it was possible the police could actually have apprehended Warren. Humans had died at her hand before, Buffy knew that, but it had never been a conscious decision to take them out that way; she’d just been past the point where she had any capacity left to think about it, to weigh up other possibilities.

“Buffy.” When Faith took her turn to speak, Buffy was almost ready to quit. Again. She was almost ready to take the lives outside on her shoulders because all she wanted to do was nothing. She didn’t want these impossible choices. She didn’t understand how Faith could lack a soul and still appear to care so much, her mouth drawn below sorrowful eyes. “You let both of us live; how can you…”

As Clarice harrumphed, one foot moving in front of the other as she began her walk to the door, Buffy could feel whatever energy that powered her instincts snap right along her synapses. She could feel her own strength, her own speed, and she wasn’t sure how she could ever deny what that was meant for – what she’d always been told it was meant for. She’d come so far in her life and the world had changed so much around her, but she didn’t know how she could fight what she was.

It was a fact of the matter that the two vamps in front of her had changed themselves, wasn’t it? They’d made themselves who they were. She just hoped they could all go on as they had been.

 _This’ll be the last time,_ she told herself before she struck Clarice down. _The last._ And she did it from behind, swallowing down bile.

But then she was feeling it, the ash on her hands. _Oh no._ Spike was holding her, but he had to see it. _Oh fuck._ He had to see it now. Didn't he?

.

[end]


End file.
